Strategic Thinking and Technical Proficiency: The Two Key Skills Every Health and Medical Communication Project Needs
By Melissa Waine | Health and Medical Communication Consultant, Sydney
Most people think that clear messaging, accurate data and a consistent tone of voice are the critical ingredients for health or medical content. And they are, to an extent.
Picture a reviewer on an NHMRC panel with 40 applications to score in a fortnight. Or an exhausted carer reading a fact sheet at hospital discharge, trying to understand what a new diagnosis means for the person they love. Or a policy adviser with ten minutes to decide whether a report's findings justify a change in national guidelines.
Each of these readers needs something different. But the communication that reaches them succeeds or fails for the same two reasons.
Every health and medical communication project relies on two capabilities working together: strategic thinking, to see the bigger picture of who the audience is and what the work needs to achieve, and technical proficiency, to drill down into the detail of the data and get every number, claim and nuance right.
Strategy without technical depth produces convincing content that can't withstand scrutiny. Technical depth without strategy produces accurate content that isn't compelling, so nobody acts on it.
After 20 years as a Sydney-based health and medical communication consultant, I've found this marriage of skills holds across every type of project I take on, from NHMRC and MRFF grant applications to patient and consumer resources to national AMR surveillance reporting.
Strategic Thinking: Taking a Bird's Eye View
Strategic thinking is the ability to step back from the data and ask what the communication needs to do, for whom, and in what context. It happens before a single sentence is drafted, and it shapes every decision that follows.
In health and medical communication, strategic thinking means answering questions like these:
Who is the real audience? A grant is read by assessors with specific criteria. A clinical resource is read by time-poor GPs. A consumer fact sheet may be read by someone with low health literacy, high anxiety or English as a second language.
What decision or action should follow? Funding the research, changing a prescribing habit, booking a screening test, or simply feeling less alone with a diagnosis.
What context surrounds the work? National health priorities, funder missions, policy reform, competing messages and what the audience already believes.
What is the one thing the reader must take away? Most health documents contain dozens of findings. Strategy decides which one leads.
Strategic thinking is why two documents built from identical evidence can have completely different impact. One buries the key finding on page 14. The other frames it so the reader understands (immediately) why it matters to them, and most importantly, what the heck they can do about it.
Getting Technical With It: Drilling Down Into The Data
Technical proficiency is the ability to read, interpret and accurately represent complex scientific and clinical information. It's what allows a medical writer or health communicator to work directly with the evidence rather than relying on someone else's summary of it.
Very often, I will clarify technical aspects of a research project grant application; or work with an SME, whether that's a clinician or researcher, on a research translation project or government report.
Accesibility and the use of plain language has dramatically changed how complex health and scientific data is communicated to policy-makers, patients/consumers and the general public.
Communicating health messaging has some interesting quirks that also need to be adhered to. It's no longer fashionable to call patients patients, rather "consumers" or "people with lived experience" is preferred. Similarly, presenting statistics and numbers needs to be delivered in a digestable way (say, almost four fifths instead of 79.2%).
Add AI to the mix and things get tricky. While LLMs can be fantastic for concisely summarising data, they can frequently misinterpret the literature they cite. (Yes, even your favourite one).
Shaping the Evidence Needs Tools
The problem with most health and medical projects is rarely a lack of content. It's a lack of communication that actually lands with the audience.
Shaping the evidence to craft it into something that will land requires developed expertise and using both skills at once.
Looking for senior communication expertise for your next health or medical project? Get in touch for a free 30-minute strategy call and we'll work out the best angle and approach together.
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